Stanley L. Jaki’s Questions on Science and Religion is 201
pages of text, organized in 14 chapters, supplemented by a 2 page foreword, a 3 page listing of the author’s other works, and
a 1 page biography of the author. It contains 100 footnotes and 1 drawing. I
have not counted the number of paragraphs or words in the book, but that can be
done by anyone interested in doing so. Nor do I have the expertise necessary to
determine the font size in which the book is printed.

After reading the preceding
paragraph you are perhaps wondering: why the quantitative description of the
book? You are probably more interested in what the book conveys, what its
purpose is. The paragraph’s focus on the quantitative cannot provide that.
Indeed, you may be slightly irritated by the paragraph because, you rightly
believe, a book review should instead address the book’s content.

Science, according to Fr.
Jaki, is only concerned with the quantitative aspect of things.“Science has to measure in order to
legitimate any of its claims and discoveries.”Science, thus, cannot answer any question that begins with
“what is.” What is: gravity? force? mass?
energy? Science can use quantities to measure and
describe them, but it cannot explain the nature of the thing or process. “Hence
science can say something about everything, but in fact very little about most
things as long as one thinks that the words ‘what,’ ‘why,’ ‘for what purpose,’
‘morally good or bad’ are not taken for mere words.” Science, in other words,
can describe a book in quantitative terms, but it cannot evaluate its content.

Religion, in contrast, has
no competence about quantities. But philosophy or religion can address “what”
or “why” or “for what purpose” or “morally good or bad.” Thus, Fr. Jaki
repeatedly states: science concerns how the heavens go,
religion concerns how to go to heaven. Whenever science or religion is invoked
to declaim on matters within the competence of the other, then confusion,
misunderstandings, and errors follow almost inexorably. “God did not put
quantities (including science) and all else (including religion) in opposition
to one another. He merely put them in two domains that for a human mind are not
conceptually reducible to one another. It is in their being separate from one
another that they serve their respective aims without confusion. Such is the
gist of the answer to all questions about the relation of science and
religion.”

Fr. Jaki brutally exposes
those who use science to argue that there is no God, or that there is nothing
but the material, or that Christianity is false. Just as brutally, he exposes
those who try to use religion to disprove science, or to use science or
arguments based on it, to prove religious points.

Science cannot prove or
disprove creation out of nothing, Fr. Jaki points out, because it cannot
measure existence, non-existence, or nothing. Science must assume existence.
“To be seized by the question of why anything exists at all demands a mind that
sees more than what science can see. … To be seized by that question one has to
draw on a heritage which science as such cannot exploit, let alone evaluate.
The question is within the purview of any mind whether touched or untouched by
science.”

The explanation of existence
and essence is in the realm of philosophy and religion, not science. Believers,
though, should not “swear by” the “Bible’s first chapter, or Genesis 1, the
famed creation story,” as a “science textbook endorsed by the word of God.”
“Augustine of Hippo formulated the precept that since salvation history tends
toward a new heaven and a new earth, whatever it contains about this physical
world is not necessarily a revealed truth. Therefore if any biblical statement
about this physical world is found in conflict with what reason had
established, it should be reinterpreted accordingly.”

Whenever the Church has
forgotten or disregarded St.
Augustine’s admonition, such as in the Galileo case, it
has held itself up to ridicule. Thus, writes Fr. Jaki, “those
who try to introduce creationism as an alternate to evolution do the worst
disservice to the salvation history which they profess to believe in.” Science
can establish, for example, that, contrary to the statement in Genesis 1, there
is no firmament or roof above the earth. Neither religion nor the Bible requires
believers to pretend otherwise. One must concede Genesis 1 is not a scientific
description, and therefore, one must not proffer it as an alternative to any
scientific theory, including evolution. This, of course, is not an endorsement
of Darwinism, or the uses to which Darwin’s
scientific theory are put. It merely reflects that all or parts of his theory
may be disproved by science; none can be proved or disproved by Genesis 1.

If Fr. Jaki reserves special
disdain for those who push religion into the realm of science by insisting on
creationism, he has at least as great a disdain for those scientists who urge
science as offering a materialistic explanation of everything. “Nothing shows
so effectively the atrophying character of scientific thinking, or rather of a
thinking that wants to be exclusively scientific, than the denial, by great
scientists, of man’s free will. Einstein was one of these to his eternal shame.
… A world view in which the World, or the Universe writ large is the ultimate
entity, allows no room for free will, not even for thinking freely about such
an ultimate entity.”

He even invokes science to
demonstrate that science cannot explain all. Specifically, he invokes Gödel’s
Theorem. “Only those trained in mathematical logic would savor” Gödel’s Theorem
as first expressed in 1931, but, he says, it was put “in a form comprehensible
to the layman” in 1962. Basically, Gödel’s Theorem demonstrates mathematically
that in any arithmetic system there will be a statement that can neither be
proved nor disproved; the consistency of an arithmetic system cannot be proved
within that system. To prove or disprove every conceivable statement about
numbers within the system, one must go outside the system to come up with new
rules and axioms - thus creating a larger system with its own unprovable
statements.

I admit I was confused by
Fr. Jaki’s discussion of Gödel’s Theorem, even after reading it several times.
Indeed, to come to my layman’s understanding of the theorem that I set forth in
the preceding paragraph, I had to go outside Fr. Jaki’s book by consulting
Antony Flew’s A Dictionary of Philosophy.
I readily concede a mathematician may consider my condensation of the theorem
technically deficient. But, I believe, my condensation allows Fr. Jaki’s
salient point: “Physicists, who by 1930 were working on a theory that would
unify relativity theory and quantum mechanics, should have realized that
Gödel’s paper was a handwriting on the wall of their
fondest aspirations. After all, their theories of physics were becoming more
and more mathematical and forbiddingly so.” And, “Gödel’s theorem dealt a
grievous blow to hopes about a final physical theory because this could not be
implemented without a very elaborate form of mathematics.” Thus, “such a theory
is possible to formulate, but when it is on hand one cannot know that it is a
final theory,” given Gödel’s Theorem.

Some scientists suggest they
are working to establish a unified physical theory that would make a Creator
unnecessary because it would show that the universe necessarily is what it is
and cannot be anything else. They believe science would thus rebut the
theological argument that the universe is contingent and therefore needs a
Creator.But, because Gödel’s
Theorem shows there cannot be a mathematical system with a proof of built-in
consistency, and because physics must be highly mathematical, no one can
construct a physical theory that would be strictly final. In other words,
Gödel’s Theorem renders the scientific search for a provable unified theory a
fool’s errand. And, of course, the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”

Fr. Jaki is knowledgeable,
insightful, even brilliant. He has doctorates in
theology and science. Questions on Science and Religion is meant as a
summary or synthesis of the principal points he has made in previous works on
science and religion during his lengthy career. The “book has especially been
written” for Catholics, but it sometimes assumes a familiarity with history,
philosophy, and science that few are likely to have. Consequently, some
allusions are obscure and one cannot help but think one has missed some of Fr.
Jaki’s points. Fr. Jaki’s humor is wry and dry; his style is sometimes slightly
stilted and complicated by use of the passive voice. Despite his receipt of the
Templeton Prize and other honors, he seems exasperated that his insights have
not received greater public recognition.